Bush: Time to dismantle Tennessee's school-to-prison pipeline

Each morning, I slow down as I drive past the concrete blocks in downtown Memphis that once held up the Confederacy.

It has become a daily source of inspiration to reflect on the unrelenting courage, commitment and creativity that leaders in my community displayed to bring down monuments to oppression and inhumanity. Years of meetings, protests, threats, paperwork and political maneuvering culminated in the erasure of these public symbols of white supremacy.

As the Chief Public Defender for Shelby County, this gives me hope. It demonstrates that this community can make difficult change when there is a sustained will to confront injustice.

Razing racial disparities in our juvenile justice system will require the level of courage, commitment and creativity it took to bring down those statues -- times 10. That sounds daunting, but Memphis is not alone in this fight. What is wrong here is wrong in communities across our state.

In December, a Blue Ribbon Task Force on Juvenile Justice, led by co-chairs Tennessee House Speaker Beth Harwell and State Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris, released a final report after months of research and deliberation. What the task force found is that outcomes in juvenile courts in Tennessee vary wildly from county to county, data is accumulated and reported without uniformity, and black children are disproportionately represented at every stage of the system.

Racial disparities in our juvenile justice system is a problem we know well in Memphis, where independent federal monitors recently confirmed that disparate outcomes for children of color have not budged, even after five years of federal intervention and oversight. Clearly, this is not a problem that law enforcement and the court system can solve alone.

One of the most critical changes we are called to make is how young people of color are embraced in Memphis. Will black youth continue to be unfairly seen as potential dangers to society in need of being controlled or "fixed" by the justice system? Or do we make the crucial shift to see the potential that can be released if, as a community, we reach our potential to be a truly caring city that empowers all children -- with unique attention and resources reserved for young people living in poverty and facing lack of opportunity and discrimination.

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Morning column that offers both commentary and news on the top stories in Memphis.

In Memphis we should look closely at problematic systems we can dismantle. It will take commitment and courage to unravel the complex drivers that push the Memphis area to lead the nation in "opportunity youth" -- the more than 29,000 young people from ages 16 to 24 who are neither in school nor employed.

We should grapple with the reality -- in the midst of important reform underway in our public schools -- that we still have the highest rates of out-of-school suspensions and expulsions in the state. Too often, this mandated separation from an educational environment results in youth entering the juvenile justice system. It’s referred to as the "school-to-prison pipeline", and the task force has called on our state to take it down.

On Tuesday, the Tennessee General Assembly will convene the 2018 legislative session. The findings from this task force will be the basis for new legislation. The general solutions proposed by the task force are practical, level-headed and familiar: prevention is key to reducing deeper system involvement with low risk youth; protecting the public while containing costs is best achieved by targeting resources on high-risk youth; and, sustaining effective practices through continued oversight and reinvestment in a continuum of evidence-based services is necessary.

The challenge for our legislators will be to find the commitment, courage and creativity needed to truly transform our juvenile justice system. In the past five years, comprehensive juvenile justice reform has taken place in Georgia, Hawaii, Kansas, Kentucky, South Dakota and West Virginia -- all while reducing expensive youth out-of-home custody, closing juvenile correctional facilities, reinvesting millions in community based services. And all the while improving public safety.

We have an opportunity, both locally and statewide, to begin to make the difficult change that will provide all young people with the dignity, respect and fairness they deserve while making communities safer.

There is no better time to realize this opportunity than 2018. As the nation turns its eyes to Memphis to mark the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we must identify the barriers to growth in our community -- and take them down.
As Dr. King famously said, "Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress."

We truly honor what Dr. King stood for and died for when we remove the structures that block the flow of progress for young people of color. Let us be a city where all kids are treated with dignity and respect, and a place where those empty blocks of concrete not only symbolize a departure from an ugly past, but a platform for creating a more just and equitable Memphis.